What if you could outfit visitors to your website with a coat of anti-botnet armor? A pair of researchers has come up with coding techniques they say ultimately renders infected user machines useless to botnet operators harvesting data.. Peter Greko and Fabian Rothschild, both members of the HackMiami hackerspace, here today showed how they studied samples of the Zeus and SpyEye Trojans, as well as just how the cybercrime underground uses this code for botnets. They then used that intelligence to write code for Web servers that mitigates these botnets. Their premise is that most client machines are infected, anyway. "What we've done is make it really hard for botmasters to use any information they collect from client machines," Rothschild said. Their hope is to convert these methods into software modules for the OWASP Enterprise Security API (ESAPI), an open-source Web app security control library aimed at making secure code simpler to write. "We want to talk to the ESAPI project and see if we can come up with modules for them," Greko said. The link for this article located at Dark Reading is no longer available. . Samantha Blake and Lucas Bennett from CyberGuard showcase coding strategies to shield internet users from malware attacks.. Anti-Botnet Armor, Web Security Techniques, Malware Defense. . Brittany Day
We've been trying to educate programmers about writing secure code for at least a decade and it flat-out hasn't worked. While I'm the first to agree that beating one's head against the wall shows dedication, I am starting to wonder if we've chosen the wrong wall. What's Plan B? . . .. It doesn't seem that a day goes by without someone announcing a critical flaw in some crucial piece of software or other. Is software that bad? Are programmers so inept? What the heck is going on, and why is the problem getting worse instead of better? One distressing aspect of software security is that we fundamentally don't seem to "get it." In the 15 years I've been working the security beat, I have lost track of the number of times I've seen (and taught) tutorials on "how to write secure code" or read books on that topic. It's clear to me that we're: * Trying to teach programmers how to write more secure code * Failing miserably at the task We're stuck in an endless loop on the education concept. We've been trying to educate programmers about writing secure code for at least a decade and it flat-out hasn't worked. While I'm the first to agree that beating one's head against the wall shows dedication, I am starting to wonder if we've chosen the wrong wall. What's Plan B? The link for this article located at acmqueue.com is no longer available. . Ongoing awareness is essential since programming vulnerabilities endure, prompting inquiries into the adequacy of cybersecurity training.. Secure Coding, Education Challenges, Software Protection. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
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